This week’s texts were primarily concerned with space, land, and decolonization. “When Place Becomes Race” by Sherene H Razack examines physical space to counter notions of space as merely a container to be filled but rather a dynamic, material product of segregation, “unequal economic relations,” and social construction. This introduction covered a wide range of topics – mythologies created by settler colonialists, economic inequality, unhoused people using public spaces, separation created by institutions like the Hopital General, landscapes in literature, and more – and discussion of how each are inherently spatial considerations. “Land as Life” by Mishuana Goeman also centered around space, but Goeman is careful to separate her use of the word “land” from those that mean home or landscape or space in an abstract sense. Instead her discussion centers on land as a meaning-making place and one in which we must deconstruct the view of land as property. Like Razack, Goeman discusses the danger of assuming space “acts as a fluid medium in which mobile subjects dwell,” demanding a closer examination of relationships to land in Indigenous scholarship and a recognition of land as more than a limited territory delineated by invisible boundaries of property and border lines. I was most captivated by the discussion of the many prison sites which are placed on sites of significance in Indigenous narratives. I was honestly completely unaware of that fact, and I found it a striking example of the intersection between settler colonialism and the modern prison industrial complex. This is a topic I hope to explore further. I also noticed Goeman’s mention that “we need to decolonize our imaginations to decolonize the lived spaces we occupy.” Upon reading this the first time, I barely noticed this use of decolonization to mean an abstract, individually lead process of analyzing one’s thinking patterns. Afterall, I have seen decolonization to mean just that on many occasions. It wasn’t until reading “Decolonization is not a metaphor” by Tuck and Yang that I really stopped to analyze this line. Tuck and Yang, acknowledge the importance of the questioning and social work that Goeman and others mean when they use “decolonization” this way, but they warn that this metaphorical use dilutes the words true and literal meaning. I found “Decolonization” to be the most salient text.
Leave a Reply